Words and the Way We Use Them

By

J. Bottum

Updated Nov. 6, 2003 12:01 a.m. ET

An easy language English is, no one ever said. Out reel the sentences till back they reel in. Like a slow and sinuous snake, a passage may, with calm deliberation, slide through dozens of subordinate clauses to form periodic constructions of some genuine stateliness. Or not. English syntax, like English grammar, is the despair of schoolchildren and the joy of poets.

Then, of course, there is the vocabulary. With its natural tendency to distinguish apparent synonyms, its love of technical nouns, its doubled root in a...